John Ivison: Tories calling NDP's bluff on budget

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Stephen Harper keeps telling Canadians that he doesn’t want “an opportunistic and unnecessary election” but, with the Conservatives maintaining a double-digit lead in the polls, no one believes him.

Perhaps they will after they see Tuesday’s budget. When Jim Flaherty stands up in the House of Commons, he is expected to unveil a financial plan that has taken a number of expensive ideas from the wish lists of other federal leaders, particularly the NDP’s Jack Layton.

Front and centre will be the announcement that the Harper government will replenish funding for the ecoEnergy home retrofit program that gave grants of up to $5,000 to homeowners who want to carry out energy-saving improvements, such as increasing insulation or upgrading a furnace. The budget has set aside $400-million for the program.

The ecoEnergy program is due to run out of funding at the end of this month, but the government stopped accepting bookings for retro-fit evaluations a year ago. It became a victim of its own success after demand tripled and it became too expensive for a government that was keen to rein in stimulus spending.

But Mr. Layton made it one of his key demands.

The question now becomes: Can Mr. Layton take “yes” for an answer?

The Finance Minister has already made it clear that he is prepared to respond to another of the NDP leader’s key demands, namely help for low-income seniors and access to physicians in rural areas.

The budget will allow the government to forgive up to $40,000 in student loans for new doctors and up to $20,000 in student loans for nurses in rural and remote communities.

It is also expected to include $50-million in new research for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ont., as well as $4-million in spending for the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute in northern Ontario, a government source told Postmedia News.

The government also indicated that it would launch programs to help veteran members of the Canadian Forces transition to civilian life through job opportunities in the construction sector.

Mr. Flaherty has dismissed out of hand the NDP call to cut sales tax on home heating fuel, a measure he called “extraordinarily expensive,” and his hands are tied by the provinces on another of Mr. Layton’s requests — a demand to sweeten benefits under the Canada Pension Plan.

But by taking such a conciliatory approach, the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister are calling Mr. Layton’s bluff. New ads feature the NDP leader championing the value of working together to get things done, “putting the partisan games aside.”

Many Conservatives have tired of minority government and are raking the ground, nostrils flaring, at the prospect of going to the polls. They still hold a double-digit lead in most polls, even if senior Conservatives expect their numbers to dip in the wake of the Bruce Carson scandal.

But Mr. Harper enjoys his job too much to risk losing it. The NDP leader will have to decide whether he has won enough little victories to justify propping up the Conservatives. The ecoEnergy program is not the only big-ticket item that may ease the budget’s passage. The Prime Minister has learned from bitter experience never to rely on Mr. Layton. As such, the government has fast-tracked negotiations with Jean Charest’s Quebec government over a $2.2-billion compensation package for harmonizing its sales tax. Government spin doctors told journalists Sunday that the money would not be in the budget, but it is clear that a deal is imminent. The Bloc Québécois may yet decide that bringing down the Conservatives this week could deny Quebecers a windfall, although Gille Duceppe, the Bloc leader, told reporters Monday that if the $2.2-billion is not in the budget, he will stop reading.

The prevailing wisdom is that a general election is inevitable. Those calculations will likely have to be revised after the budget is tabled. The Conservatives may yet tumble if a vote of no-confidence is tabled by the Liberals later this week, in the wake of a parliamentary vote on the contempt of Parliament charge. But it would take some pretzel logic for the NDP to support the government’s budget and then vote no-confidence.

In many ways, it would serve the Liberals right if they are hoist with their own petard. They are so fixated on fighting an election on ethics and honesty, they have failed to ensure that it is an issue on which they have an advantage. A new Ipsos Reid poll for Postmedia over the weekend suggests they don’t. The poll said that Canadians believe political honesty trumps economic recovery as the main issue at the next election — but they believe the Tories are the best party to deliver a government they can trust.

The poll was taken before the revelations that Bruce Carson, a former prime ministerial advisor, is being investigated for potential influence peddling. While most of the petit-scandale on Parliament Hill are ignored by people too busy or uninterested to pay attention, this one involves a busty 22-year-old former escort and what Dr. Johnson called “amorous propensities” on the part of someone who used to be close to the Prime Minister. The Conservative reputation for clean government will take a hit.

But the take-away from the Ipsos poll is that voters are like rock stars who can’t remember the ’70s but will never forget them — they forget the details but have lasting impressions about how they felt at the time.

The Liberals are still paying the reputational price for the sponsorship scandal and, regardless of Conservative transgressions since then, the Tories still haven’t been found guilty of doing anything as egregious as stealing taxpayers’ money and then rebating it to the party.

After all the hoopla about the apparent inevitability of an election over the budget, it would not be a complete shock if it sails through the House of Commons with barely a murmur of discontent from the opposition benches.